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Bruce Lincoln

GENDERED THE DISCOURSES: EARLY HISTORY OF MYTHOS AND LOGOS

Today,as you may have anticipated,I will speak on behalf of radicalism in history of religions. That term, however, is sufficiently vague and evokes sufficiently varied responses that I probably should begin by unpacking it a bit. By "radicalismin history of religions" I mean the strain that runs from Xenophanes through Carneades, on to Montaigne, the Enlightenment, the Hegelian Left, Marx, Nietzsche, Robertson Smith, Durkheim, Gramsci, and many others. Within our discipline proper, in this century it has been most powerfully advanced by Italian scholars, including Raffaele Pettazzoni,Amaldo Momigliano, Eresto de Martino, Carlo Ginzburg,and CristianoGrotAngelo Brelich, Vittorio Lanternari, tanelli. Briefly, it is the strain that conscientiously resists accepting and reproducingthe self-representationsof the materials under study, taking its task to be the critical interrogationof such data. Consistent with this, it is the strain that focuses on history over religion, the contingent over the eternal, the social and material over the spiritual. And furtherstill, it is that which in so doing challenges conventional assumptions and authorities, intervenes on behalf of have-nots against haves, seeks controversy, and pursues critical issues down to their very roots. This lecture is meant in that spirit.
This is the author'sinaugural lecture as professor of history of religions at the University of Chicago, delivered February4, 1996.

? 1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/97/3601-0001 $01.00

Gendered Discourses

I In 1940, as the Wehrmachtrolled over France and the Luftwaffe pounded Britain, Wilhelm Nestle, then seventy-five and a towering figure in classical studies, published a book the title of which has become the standard shorthandversion of a story the "Westerntradition"never tires of telling itself about itself: VomMythos zu Logos: die Selbstentfaltungdes griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates.I Here, as had others before him, Nestle provided a creation account for Western civilization, focusing on the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. to abwhen-as he saw it-fables gave way to logic, anthropomorphism In the chaotic to and to straction, poetry dialectic, religion philosophy. time of beginnings Nestle set Homer, Hesiod, and the style of discourse Greeks called mythos and we know as "myth."Then, skillfully and painstakingly, he showed how the heroic efforts of Socrates, Plato, and their immediate forebears brought about an ordered cosmos by replacing mythos with logos, the discourse of reasoned propositions. Given its relatively straightforwardplot, appealing heroes, edifying message, and satisfying closure, this narrativehas had great appeal. Many have identified with it strongly, not least Nestle's contemporaries and countrymen, whom he implicitly counseled to associate the Reich's victories with the triumph of reason and Kultur, not-as some of the most influential Nazi ideologists argued-with irrationalismand the resurgenceof myth.2 To problematize this text by calling attentionto its context and subtext does not in itself invalidate conventional understandingsof "the Greek miracle" or progress "from mythos to logos." Nestle was not the first to tell this story, and surely he was not the last.3 At best, it might make
1 Wilhelm Nestle, Vom Mythos zu Logos: die Selbstentfaltung des griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates (Stuttgart: Kr6ner, 1940; 2d ed., 1942; reprint, Darmstadt:Scientia, 1966). 2 I have found little to indicate that Nestle had strong Nazi affiliations: He goes virtually unmentioned in Volker Losemann's Nationalsozialismus und Antike (Hamburg: Hoffman & Campe, 1977), for instance. Still, there are some jarring moments in his text, as when he mentions, with passing approval, the interest of epic, medical, sophist, and historic classical texts in the issue of race (pp. 70, 220, 252-53, and 509, respectively). This notwithstanding, I am inclined to understandNestle's title, diction, and line of argument as standing in an antithetical relation to the most widely read Nazi treatise after Mein Kampf, Alfred Rosenberg's Der Mythus der 20. Jahrhunderts: eine Wertung der unserer Zeit (1st ed., 1930; by 1944, it had gone through seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkampf 247 editions, and 1,229,000 copies were in print). Nestle's attempt to write classical history in a fashion that might help modulate Nazi excesses may also be seen in books he wrote immediately before and after the war: Der Friedensgedanke in der antiken Welt (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1938) and Griechische Weltanschauung in ihrer Bedeutung far die Gegenwart (Stuttgart:Hannsmann, 1946). 3 See, e.g., F M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (New York: Longmans Green, 1912); Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (London: Blackwell, 1953),

History of Religions

us hesitate for a moment and ask whether this familiar narrativeis really as persuasive as has habitually been assumed. During this moment of hesitation, I propose we consider what the key terms mythos and logos meant in the earliest Greek texts. The results are rather surprising. Consider, for example, one of the most dramaticmoments in Hesiod's Theogony, when Gaia (the primordial"Earth,"mother of the Titans and of the gods) asks her childrento castrateOuranos(Sky), her grandmother abusive husband and their oppressive father. At first the young deities are speechless with dread. Then,becomingbold, greatKronos Responded quicklywith these mythoi: I promiseI will bringthis deed to fulfillment. "Mother, I have no regard for ourfather,he of the evil name,
For he first contrived unseemly deeds."4

In the tense momentbefore Kronos speaks, we understandhim to be reflecting on his father'scrimes, contemplatingthe outrage his mother suggests, calculatingrisks against gains, and comparinghis strengthto that of his adversary.When he finally speaks, he does so in a fashion the text designates mythos: a speech that is raw and crude, but forceful and true. This speech is, in effect, a key moment in the creation of his strength. Within it commingle vaunting self-assertion, denunciationof his enemy, prediction of triumph, and a solemn pledge of deeds to come. Nothing in our normal understanding of the term "myth" prepares us for such a usage.
W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, I: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 1-3, 140-42; G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 72-74; and Peter Schmitter, "Vom 'Mythos' zum in Geschichte der 'Logos': Erkenntniskritikund Sprachreflexionbei den Vorsokratikern," Sprachtheorie (Tiibingen: Narr, 1991), 2:57-86. Eric Havelock has added an important dimension to this discussion by stressing how important a role was played by the introduction of writing, but in many other ways the story he tells remains similar to that of his predecessors. See, e.g., his essay "Preliteracyand the Presocratics,"in The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its CulturalConsequences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 220-60, and "The Linguistic Task of the Presocratics," in Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy, ed. Kevin Robb (La Salle, Ill.: Monist Library of Philosophy, 1983), pp. 7-81. 4 Theogony 168-72: 6?8 OapoioaaS pyaq Kp6voc d&yKU7Xo'qTr|TS al[r' auit( 3oa0otot tpool68a PlT?epa KE:SvfVTO6TO "p( Lrsp, ly6) KEV y' DiooaXe6voqTEksoaiit1 oUK&Xayi.o :pyov, neiinaxp6O y7s8o(0OVUou d&uct a PioaTro ;pya." rp6TpoS yap fiTperipou'

Gendered Discourses

In the opening scene of the Iliad, mythos also denotes a blunt and aggressive act of plainspeaking:a hardboiledspeech of intimidation. Here, Chryses,priest of Apollo, attemptsto ransomhis daughterfrom Agamemnon, offering "gifts beyond number"and his prayers for Greek victory, if only his daughterbe returned.All shout in favor of accepting his proposal, save Agamemnon. this powerfulmythos: he let fly, andproclaimed Harshly "Oldman,don'tlet me findyou by the hollow ships, now or comingbacklater. Eithertarrying The god'sscepterand filletswon'tprotectyou. I won'tfree her untilold age comes uponher In ourhousein Argos,far fromher father's land, Whereshe will ply the loom andsharemy bed. Now go, anddon'tprovokeme. Thatway, you'llget home safer." Persuaded Thushe spoke,andthe old manwas frightened. by this
mythos, He silently departed .. .

From these (and other) examples, one begins to perceive that in epic diction, mythos usually denotes the rough speech of headstrong men, who-for better or worse-are reckless in their power and determinedto prevail. Agamemnon could accept Chryses' offer or could choose to deflect it in gracious fashion. Instead, he rebuffs the priest as harshly as possible, threateninghim with violence, while trumpetinghis lust for the old man's daughter.Far from incidental, his boorishness and vulgarity are vehicles of metacommunication,whereby Agamemnon announces himself a man whose rank and power are so great he has no use of politesse or circumlocution, for he need take no account of the feelings of others. Ultimately, the mythos he directs to Chryses is an attempt to establish relations of dominance and subordinationthroughthis bullying act of speech: a challenge and a claim of strength,issued to an adversary in front of an audience, which succeeds-or seemingly so-when Chryses slinks away in terror.
5 Iliad 1.25-34:
aX&a KcaKC5 dcpiEt, KpacTpbv 6'
"pJ Go, 'YpOV, Koi1n|tYv. ?YO

ixtiLUOov?T?E'E
KtlXiO

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* tpiv ptv Kait yipag Tlv 6' Ey6i o06 UGTo'

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n~rtStv

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History of Religions

The important work of Richard Martin adds statistical support to these impressions. In his study of the Iliad, Martin found that in 155 of the 167 times the noun mythos or the related verb mytheomai appears (93 percent), the situation is one in which a powerful male gives orders, makes boasts, or does both at the same time. Mythos he sees as a speech redolent of power, performedat length, in public, by one in a position of The same patternis present in the works of Hesiod, where the authority.6 term appears six times. Only once do females speak a mythos, and then it is not mortal women, but the divine Muses, who address Hesiod the shepherd abusively and contemptuously before giving him the gift that transforms him into a poet. Throughout the epic-Hesiodic as well as Homeric-mythos does not just reflect or express an authority that has prior and independentexistence; rather,it is a prime moment in the constitution of that authority, being an act of speech that in its operation establishes the speaker'sdomination of interlocutorand audience alike. In a society where relations of dominance and submission are characterized above all in sexual terms, the gendered natureof mythos is always implicit. On occasion it is also thematized directly, as in Hesiod's fable of the hawk and nightingale (of which Nietzsche-no surprisewas exceedingly fond).7 Now I will tell a fable to the kings, andthey will recognize themselves. Thusthe hawksaidto the nightingale, she of the dappled throat, As he boreher high in the cloudsafterseizingher. Stuckin his claws, she piteously
6 Richard P. Martin, The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). 7 In his brief career as professor of classical philology, Nietzsche twice taught seminars on the Works and Days (1870 and 1878). He paraphrasedthe fable of hawk and nightingale in The Genealogy of Morals, first essay, sec. 13, eliminating all traces of sympathy for prey and critique of predation:"That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproachingthese birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: 'these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather is opposite, a lamb-would he not be good?' there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: 'we don't dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.' To demand of strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength"(trans. Walter Kaufmann). On the Hesiodic passage, see Annie Bonnaf6, "Le rossignol et la justice en pleurs," Bulletin de l'association Georges Bude (1983): 260-64; Jens Uwe Schmidt, "Hesiods Ainos von Habicht und Nachtigall," Wortund Dienst 17 (1983): 55-76; Steven Lonsdale, "Hesiod's Hawk and Nightingale (Op. 202-12), Fable or Omen?" Hermes 117 (1989): 403-12; and Marie-ChristineLeclerc, "Le rossignol et 1'6pervierd'Hesiode: Une fable a double sens," Revue des etudes grecques 105 (1992): 37-44.

Gendered Discourses Wept,andforcefullyhe spokethis mythosto her: hashold Onewhois faryourbetter "Good lady,whydo you screech? of you. Youwill go whereI takeyou, singerthatyou are. I will eithermakeyou my dinneror let you go, if I wish, But it is senselessto pit yourselfagainstsomeonemorepowerful: Youend up losing and sufferpainin disgrace."8

Does one need to be told that the name of the hawk (irex) is grammatically masculine and that of the nightingale (aedon) feminine? Or are the other contrasts that structurethis passage-predator/prey, high/low, strong/weak, arrogant and brutal/delicate and frightened-sufficient to make the point? Differences in the natureof their speech show the same contrast. Thus, the nightingale sings and weeps mournfully, while the hawk trumpetsa mythos, the explicit goal of which is to silence his victim. Speaking forcefully (epikrateos), without euphemism or grace, the hawk describes a harsh world, and the cruelty of his words matches that of his actions. In his tone and manner, he shows utter confidence, not just in his power, but in the right of the powerful to prevail. His mythos, moreover is as much a part of that power as are the beast's wings, claws, and beak. Within the epic, most mythoi are spoken in agonistic settings-above all, the battlefieldand place of assembly. In the lattercontext, a distinction is evident, for the mythoi of assembly come in two types. Some, termed "straight,"are the hard-hittingassertions and unvarnishedtruthsthrough which honest men press their case. But there are also others, as Hesiod describes in his apocalyptic vision of the Iron Age just commencing. Therewill be no favorshownto the personwho is trueto his oath, nor to him who is just, men glorifyarrogance Nor to the good man;rather, Andthe doerof evils. Theytakejustice into theirown hands,and thereis no
8 Worksand Days 202-11: Nuv 6' alvov PaiotXuoatv p@co (ppoveouat Kai aCLTOK' J6' iprq] ipoaiEuctv adtS6va rtotictKX66pov

Uilpg6X'ev

vcpQoaot(?po)v 6vOUcrat pieapnaxd' I]6' UEX6v,yvaaTaotoict ncnap{?vr 4u(P' O6vUxoot, Ec1usv' pjp?TO' TxiVO Y' nltKpaTOx npbOi p6q pov X' E? Vt Os 7oXXOv dpsiov' "8atltovli, Ti XXrlKaqC 6T 8' etq fio' av y?6)nep ayc KOaadot6v eouaov' 6?stvov 6', ai K' c0Xko,notlilaola iA [?#CT(o. &dvTq(ppiEi1v' CpovaS &app)v 6', o; K' eX n Ip KpSi 7p6q T' aioEXscov &a'ya irCdosE1. ViKrlSTs OTepeTrat

History of Religions Shame.He who is evil will damagethe betterman, Speakingwith crookedmythoias he takesthe oath.9

In this passage, the fundamentally amoral status of mythos becomes clear. In assembly, good men andjust causes prevail by speaking straight; others, by speaking crooked. But mythoi of different kinds are available to all, mythos being an instrumentof power, and not one of justice. Inevitably, the question arises: Does there not exist some discourse of the weak, through which they are able to triumph? Is there no speech with which nightingales overcome the mythoi of hawks? II Here, let me recall a scene in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, where Lord Apollo confronts the infant Hermes and accuses him of stealing his cattle. Since the text has earlier narratedthis miraculous act of brigandage in considerable detail, we know full well the charge to be true. The interest of the scene lies in the question of whether Apollo can make his case stick, and in the contrastbetween the half-brothers,which is also a contrast between two sets of capacities: elder versus younger, stronger (krateros) versus weaker, truthful versus duplicitous, responsible versus playful, ingenuous versus cunning, aristocratversus scoundrel. Physically, Hermes is no match for Apollo, but he is among the shrewdest of gods.10When challenged, he knows how to respond. Withhis craftsandseductivelogoi, He wantedto trickthe god of the silverbow.1
9 Worksand Days 190-94: aa o06 xTt66EupKcou 6tKaiou o066? XLpt earTat
aiX;Lov 6; KCaKOV Kti itptv 0ou' dya0oi, p?KTCfpa 6' kv Xspoi' Kai ai6S) Lt0oouot- 6iK1C avMpa T OUK arTat, PXd&Wt {'6 KCaK0TOVdpsiova p0Ta 6Oetiat. pU0ot0atoKOXtoi;S VtiCOV, tCli6' OpKOV

10Within the Homeric Hymn, Hermes is referred to by a host of terms that play on the vocabulary of metis (cunning), haimulos (seduction), and dolos (snare, guile)-haimulometis (line 13), poikilometis (155, 514), dolophrades (282), polymetis (318), dolometis (405)-and his use of doloi is also mentioned at lines 66, 76, and 86. Regarding Hermes and the characterhe assumes in this hymn, the discussion of Norman O. Brown, Hermes the Thief (New York: Vintage, 1969 [originally published 1947]), retains its value. See also Giancarlo Croci, "Mito e poetica nell' inno a Ermes,"Bolletino dell' Istituto di Filologia greca, Universita di Padova 4 (1977/78): 175-84; Laurence Kahn, Hermes passe, ou les ambigui'tesde la communication (Paris: Maspero, 1978); and H. Herter, "L'Inno a Hermes alla luce della poesia orale," in I poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale, ed. C. Brillante et al. (Padua, 1981), pp. 183-201. 1 Homeric Hymn to Hermes 317-18:
ctTrp 6 TiXVnGiv TE Ktit aip.uioItot X6yo7otv fi0kXsv Eanaviav KuXXiVtO;Apyup6oTOov

Gendered Discourses

Ultimately Hermes succeeds in escaping his brother'swrath, although he does so by a path more circuitous than we can follow here. For the moment, let me observe that Hermes' logoi are characterizedas "seductive" (haimulioi), and associated with "craft"(tekhne) and trickery (exapatan). This is the only appearance of logoi in the Homeric Hymns, but the same associations recur in Hesiod, who uses the term six times, frequently in formulaic connection with pseudea ("falsehoods, deceptions").12Witness, for example, the culminatinglines in Hesiod's account of Pandora,the prototype of all mortal women. In her breast,Hermesshaped seductivelogoi, anda thievishcharacter, Falsehoods, Zeus. And now, the to According the plansof deep-thundering
herald of the gods Put a voice in her, and he named that woman Pan-dora ("All-gifts"), because all who dwell on Olympus Gave her a gift, and they gave her as trouble for men.13

This misogynist passage provides invaluable evidence of how Greeks of the eighth century regarded women and women's speech.14 Essentially, logoi are everything mythoi are not: soft, not harsh; ornamented, not crude or coarse; devious, not straightforward.And where powerful men use mythos, like their bodies and their weapons, to best their ad12 On the earliest uses of logos, the most thorough discussion to date is Herbert Boeder ("Der friihgriechische Wortgebrauch von Logos und Aletheia," Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 4 [1959]: 82-112), who begins with this observation: "Im Epos ist dieses Wort [logos] noch wenig gebrauchlich. Die sparlichen Belege nennen es nur im Zusammenhang von Bezauberung, Ablenkung und Irrefiihrung"(p. 82). Also of interest are Henri Fournier, Les verbes "dire" en grec ancien (Paris: Klinckseick, 1946); and Claude Calame, "'Mythe' et 'rite' en Gr6ce: des cat6gories indig6nes?" Kernos 4 (1991): 179-204. 13Worksand Days 77-82:

;v 6' iapa ol oaT1e0aott6iaKcopo; ApyEip6vT-r TEXyoui Kicai iKricXOnoV i06oo; xej66?d0' ailukiouSc v 6' apa povfiv TelU A6tb pfouXfotpapuKT6igou0fcK? 0cov Kifput, 6v61orlve 6ei Tv6E yuvaLica rIavFcpriv, ozt navxTq 'Oupntma StpaT' oXVTzg 56cprCTYav, n1Li' davpd6iav &(ploTfiotv. 60ipov 14 Regarding the attitudes of Hesiod and his contemporariestoward women, see G. Arrighetti, "II misoginismo di Esiodo," in Misoginia e maschilismo in Grecia e in Roma (Genoa: Istituto di filologia classica e medievale, Universita di Genova, 1981), pp. 27-48; Patricia A. Marquardt,"Hesiod's Ambiguous View of Women," Classical Philology 77 (1982): 283-91; Marilyn Arthur,"The Dream of a World without Women: Poetics and the Circles of Order in the Theogony Proemium,"Arethusa 16 (1983): 63-82; and Jean Rudhardt, "Pandora,Hesiode et les femmes," Museum Helveticum 43 (1986): 231-46. Note also the broader discussion of Ann Bergren, "Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought,"Arethusa 16 (1983): 69-95.

History of Religions

versaries by provoking fear, so women use logos, like their bodies and instrumentsof allure, to win by arousing desire. In point of fact, the Odyssey opens by acknowledging the power of logos and the problem it poses for men. The scene is Ogygia, fabled isle of the sorceress Calypso, where seven years earlier Odysseus had been washed ashore. Duty and destiny demand the hero complete his voyage home and battle for his wife and kingdom. Calypso, however, has other ideas. him frommiseryandlamentation; Calypsorestrained Everwith soft andseductivelogoi She beguiledhim in such a way he becameforgetfulof Ithaca.15 Calypso's blandishmentsimmobilize Odysseus and the story alike, but Odysseus is powerless against them. Her logoi are playful and winsome, even flirtatious, but unscrupulous and manipulative nonetheless. Effective for the speaker, such words are correspondingly dangerous to the hearer, for with and through them, those who are weaker-women in particular,but others as well-repeatedly overcome those more gifted in physical strength.Ultimately, it takes the intervention of Zeus to free him from Calypso's linguistic and amorous charms, and it is only after this that the epic's hero is able to act like a hero once more. The passage I have cited is the only one where the term logos appears in the Odyssey. Once overcome, the problem disappears. Usage in the Iliad is equally sparse but almost equally significant, for the sole occurrence of logos is in a scene on which all action turns.16The stage is set when the Ormenianhero Eurypylus falls wounded and Achilles, pouting by his ships, sends Patroclusto ask after him, a move the authorialvoice calls "the beginning of evil" (kakou ... arkhe, 11.604). After reaching Eurypulus, Patroclus pauses to treat his wound (11.809-848), and Book 11 ends as he cuts the arrow from his thigh and stanches the blood with healing herbs. The epic then drops this narrativethread to dwell on the fury of the Trojan assault. Only toward the middle of book 15 does it returnto Patroclus and Eurypylus.
15Odyssey 1.55-57: aie? 6Se LaXaKolta aip.luiotot X6yotOlv Kit Em Elat ikyset, nxt0S 'Id0aKniCrl; 16 also in a Logos appears manuscript variant to Iliad 4.339 but, with that exception, nowhere else in Homer, save the two passages cited here. In Hesiod it is also rare (Theogony 229, 890; Worksand Days 78, 106, 789), and the associated verb legein even rarer (Theogony 27).
TOb 0OuydTrlp 6UjTrVOV 68up6pEvov KaTCpUKsI,

10

Gendered Discourses As long as the AchaeansandTrojans Battledaround the wall, beyondthe shelterof the swift ships, Patroclus sat in the hutof kindlyEurypylus. He entertained him with logoi andon his balefulwound He sprinkled drugsto curethe darkpains. But whenhe perceivedthe Trojans rushingthe wall, As shoutsandpanicrose amongthe Danaans, He criedout in distressand smotehis thighs this speech: Withthe flat of his hands.Wailing,he uttered I can stay hereno longerwith you, "Eurypylus, yourneed, for a greatstrugglehas arisen."17 Notwithstanding

Initially, we behold a space of tranquility and companionship, where Patroclus's logoi soothe the spirit, much as his drugs (pharmaka) ease bodily pain. But when Trojantroops breach the Greeks' defensive wall, threatening annihilation, this island of calm cannot be maintained. With the hand that a moment before spread balm on Eurypylus's stricken thigh, Patroclus now bitterly smites his own. His pacific discourse of relaxation and entertainmentnow seems irresponsible, even effeminate, and so Patroclus assumes a more urgent, more active, more masculine voice: "Eurypylus,I can stay no longer.... A great struggle has arisen." From here, the story goes hurtling to its end. Patroclus hastens from Eurypylus to Achilles, and thence to battle. The healer becomes the warrior, who will kill, be killed, and draw others after him in a brutal story we know too well. It now should be clear that the most ancient texts consistently use mythos and logos to mark very different sorts of discourse: that of aggressive men and that of seductive women. Mythos is a blunt speech suited for assembly and battle, with which powerful males bludgeon and intimidate their foes. Logos, in contrast, is a speech particularlyassociated with women, but available to the gentle, the charming, and the shrewd of either sex. It is a speech soft and delightful that can also deceive and entrap. While it may be heard in many places and contexts, it is absent from the battlefield and place of assembly, for it is the na17

Iliad 15.390-400: 6' oc5p{v AXatoi re Tp);c T?e IndrpoKXog 0odov KZo0tI VICDV, dllpECdlXovTo TEiXsE; 6 y' ?vi KXtoindyYanivopor EpuiUn6oto T6(pp'
v jOT6O Te Kai pTOV X6yot;, ii7 6' ?XK?i Xuypfi Tp 6uvdov. (padppaK' aKccciaxT' staaaooc pXaltvaov

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ftgo)V xv'

T AavacovyveTo XiaXI e p6p6oxe, Tpioca, &Tap

6' :og rb?a'Xepai KaTarcprvoo',6Xoopup61pEvoc b6i y&plpya VEitKOcS opopEv Ev0e6& tapcvgLEV'
&p' ap EtETa cKatl ) nsTc?Xnkyo pnilpo

Tot 6vtpvapat xaTrovTi 7up' pj7tirq "EUp6cuX', o6UKcT

History of Religions

11

ture-indeed, the genius-of this discourse to outflank and offset the physical, political, and materialadvantagesof those who are accustomed to prevail on just such combative terrain. As a weapon of the weak-better, as a weapon of those whose strengthis not of the conventional and hegemonic forms-logos is open to a wide variety of readings that reflect the interests and sympathies of those who observe and comment. The authorialvoice of the epic generally shows fear and treats it as something unprincipled and treacherous. But it can also be read as an effective instrument through which sympathetic figures struggle against serious obstacles to accomplish reasonable, even admirable goals, as when Hermes seeks to level an uneven playing field against Apollo or when Patroclus works to soothe Eurypylus's pains. III A revised understanding of these two words has considerable import for the way we understandthe history of speech, thought, and knowledge/power-sufficient, I believe, that the first chapter in standardhistories of Western philosophy will require modification. What Heraclitus championed as logos-"not simply language but rational discussion, calculation, and choice: rationality as expressed in speech, in thought, and in action," as one commentator puts it18 -is not what his predecessors took logos to be. Similarly, the mythos Plato devalued had little in common with what Hesiod and Homer understoodby that term. Rather than taking the usage of a Heraclitus or a Plato as normative, it is preferable to understand them in their proper context as nothing more (but also nothing less) than strategic-and ultimately successfulattempts to redefine and revalorize the terms in question. Accordingly, our view of the lexemes mythos and logos must become more dynamic. These are not words with fixed meanings (indeed, no such words exist), nor did their meanings change glacially over time, as the result of impersonal processes. Rather,these words and others were the sites of important semantic struggles fought between rival regimes of truth.19
18 Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 102. 19The best treatment remains Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1963). For different approaches, see Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (New York: Routledge, 1988); Thomas Gould, The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990); and Bruce Lincoln, "Socrates' Prosecutors, Philosophy's Rivals, and the Politics of Discursive Forms,"Arethusa 26 (1993): 233-46. Also relevant and important are the discussions of Marcel Detienne (The Creation of Mythology [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986]), Paul Veyne (Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988]), and Luc Brisson (Platon, les mots et les mythes [Paris: Maspero, 1982]).

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Gendered Discourses

The issues in these struggles were serious, and the stakes were high. Whose speech would be perceived as persuasive, and whose merely beguiling? Who would inspire trust, and who arouse suspicion? Which discourses would be associated with "truth,"and which (at best) with "plausible falsehoods"? Whose constructs would hold the status of knowledge, and whose superstition? Whose characteristic practices of analysis, explication, pedagogy, and the like would command respect, and whose inspire a snicker? Whose speech (and style of speaking) would be invested with authority?The connection of these to questions of power is not difficult to perceive: Who would attract students? Who counsel rulers? Whose words would be preserved, cited, and studied thereafter? To give this vast topic the attention it deserves is hardly possible in the scope of this article. Still, I would suggest that the narrativeof progress "from mythos to logos" that begins with superstitious stories and ends in reasoned propositions is no longer tenable, if ever it was.20 Temptingthough it is to renarratethat story as one in which male bluster gave way to female art and cunning, such a story, I fear, would be equally misleading. Rather, I am inclined to think that when aristocratic Greek males could no longer establish their dominance by force and a discourse of force (i.e., mythos in its epic sense), they adopted a discourse of crafty, well-wrought persuasion (i.e., logos). In this moment, they shifted the basis for their claim to preeminence, emphasizing their intellect, education,sophistication,and speech, insteadof their birth,rank, weapons, and brawn. To accomplish this project, Plato and others labored to revise the key terms, with the result that a sanitized, degendered logos became the favored discourse of philosophers, while a trivialized and emasculated mythos was consigned to nursemaids and children. It was not until the nineteenth century that these constructions and valuations would be called into question. But that is another story. University of Chicago
20 Well into the fifth century, the meanings and values attached to mythos and logos remained unstable, contested, and the balance of power between them unresolved. Although Herodotus shows evidence for a positive use of logos against a negative use of mythos, Hecataeus began his history with the statement "I write those things that seem to me to be true, for the logoi of the Greeks, as they appear to me, are many and ridiculous" (fragment 1 Jacoby). Gorgias could entertain the possibility of absolving Helen from blame "if logos persuaded and deceived her soul" (fragment 82B11.8 Diels-Kranz). And although Heraclitus celebrated logos, while ignoring mythos, Parmenides introduced his discourse as follows: "Come, I will speak, and having heard my mythos you will carry it away" (fragment 28B2.1 Diels-Kranz).